Idioms of ἔχω and χάριν in a Short Dialogue
A candidate translating a short dialogue is treating every occurrence of ἔχω as ‘have’ and every πρός as ‘towards’. The Greek is: Α· ἔχεις μοι εἰπεῖν ποῦ μένει Δίων; Β· οὐκ ἔχω· καὶ γὰρ χθὲς αὐτὸν ἐζήτουν. Α· ἀλλὰ χάριν σοι εἴσομαι, ἐάν τι πύθωμαι. Β· οὐδὲν πρὸς ἐμέ· ἐγὼ γὰρ οὐδὲν οἶδα. The draft reads: ‘Do you have to tell me where Dion lives?’ ‘I do not have; for yesterday I was seeking him.’ ‘But I will know gratitude to you, if I learn anything.’ ‘Nothing towards me; for I know nothing.’ The candidate asks which words are literal and which are idiomatic, and whether the last line means ‘say nothing to me’.
1. Explain ἔχεις μοι εἰπεῖν and οὐκ ἔχω. What construction and meaning are involved?
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ἔχω + infinitive means ‘be able to’ or ‘can’, not ‘have to’. μοι is a dative of advantage or interest: ‘for me’. So ἔχεις μοι εἰπεῖν is ‘Can you tell me …?’ Necessity would be expressed by δεῖ σε, not by ἔχεις. οὐκ ἔχω is elliptical: ‘I cannot’, with εἰπεῖν understood from the previous line. The γάρ clause gives the reason: ‘for I was looking for him yesterday too.’ The literal ‘I do not have’ misses the ellipsis and the ability sense.
2. Translate χάριν σοι εἴσομαι and οὐδὲν πρὸς ἐμέ, justifying each.
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χάριν οἶδα τινί means literally ‘I know gratitude to someone’, i.e. ‘I am grateful to someone’. The future εἴσομαι gives ‘I will be grateful to you’. It should not be rendered as the opaque ‘I will know gratitude’. οὐδὲν πρὸς ἐμέ uses πρός + accusative to express relation or reference, not physical motion: ‘it is nothing to me’ or ‘it has nothing to do with me’. In context, B is saying that the matter is not his concern because he knows nothing. A good rendering is: ‘That is nothing to do with me; for I know nothing.’
3. The candidate renders the last line as ‘say nothing to me’. Why is that unlikely here? Give a better rendering.
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The Greek line has no verb λέγεις; it is an elliptical expression with ἐστί understood. ‘Say nothing to me’ would normally require an imperative such as μηδὲν λέγε πρός με, and it would not fit the context: A has just said he will be grateful if he learns something, and B replies that he cannot help because he knows nothing. The idiom οὐδὲν πρὸς ἐμέ means ‘it is nothing to do with me’ or ‘that is not my concern’. Better: ‘That is nothing to do with me, for I know nothing.’ The candidate has confused a prepositional idiom of relation with a verb of speaking.